Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Except you probably put a bunch of content in your letter which would lead any reasonable person to assume you have mental issues.
The texts of the e-mails that I wrote to Bogle are available as earlier blog entries at this site. Anyone who cares to look at them to find out for herself or himself what they contain may do so either now or in the days following the next price crash.
I don’t have precise recall of what I wrote in those particular e-mails. But all of the blog entries here give the general idea. There has never been even a sliver of peer-reviewed research supporting the core Buy-and-Hold claim that it is not necessary to practice price discipline when buying stocks.It is widely believed that there IS such research. The Buy-and-Holders have made claims that there is such research thousands and thousands of times. They believe that the claims are true. They believe because they know about the research that shows that short-term timing does not work. They fail to distinguish short-term timing from long-term timing (price discipline). So the core reality here is that the Buy-and-Holders have on thousands and thousands of occasions made demonstrably false claims that they themselves believe. These demonstrably false claims have put the retirements of millions of people at great risk. These demonstrably false claims caused the economic crisis that began in 2008.
Does that paragraph reveal me as someone with mental issues? It’s an incredible reality that I describe, Laugh. But everything I say in that paragraph is a reality documented at this site. I need to persuade Bogle to help us to bring the ugly side of this to an end and I cannot bring on all the positive stuff that follows from us opening the internet to honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics without persuading Bogle. So I tell him the realities when I write to him, whether those realities happen to be incredible or not.
There’s no other way to get the job done, Laugh. So I am going to continue to play it the way that I have played it. If he wants to tell people who ask following the next price crash that the reason why he did not respond to my e-mails is that he thought that I had “mental issues,” I guess that that is what he will say. I would not feel comfortable going with that one. I do not advise my good friend Jack to go with that one. But Jack gets to decide for Jack. It’s not my call. M y job is just to report accurately and fairly what happened.
I won’t say that John Greaney included an adjustment for valuations in his retirement study. To do so would be financial fraud, a felony under the laws of the United States. I will not say that there is not 35 years of peer-reviewed research showing that valuations affect long-term returns. Again, to do would be financial fraud under the laws of the United. States. Anything that I can do to help my Buy-and-Hold friends I am happy to do. But I obviously cannot commit felonies. That one is so far over the line that I cannot even give it two seconds of consideration.
I love Jack Bogle. I even feel a measure of fondness for the members of his various Goon Squads. But I don’t commit felonies. Not once. Not ever. Not in 15 years. Not in 15 billion years. Not this boy. No way, no how. It doesn’t happen.
I naturally wish you all good things, Goon friend.
Rob
Una
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